Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– As reported in yesterday’s NYTimes, and in many other papers, James Whitmore died at age 87 of lung cancer. This is an actor I had a lot of respect for and got one brief, and embarrassing moment to talk with on the phone.

Back in 1987, I was doing Abel’s Island. Tim Curry had brilliantly voiced Abel’s role, but I was lacking someone to play “Gower”, the older frog who was stranded with Abel for a short period on the island. James Whitmore was appearing off-broadway at the time, and I thought I’d ask his agent if he was available. I did a lot of calling around and wasn’t able to find an agent for him. SAG, AFTRA, EQUITY – none had agents on file. This was a bit odd. I decided to call the theater box office, and see if they could put me in touch with a representative. They told me they’d find out and call back. I left my phone number.

A couple of hours later, James Whitmore called me. Curt and gruff he demanded, “Who IS this! What do you want?” I told him I had been trying to locate an agent, that I had a part I thought he’d enjoy performing and wanted to find out if he was available. He angrily started shouting at me. Obviously, I’d caught him at the wrong time and had jumped protocol. I was all apologies, and he snapped loudly that I should send the script to the theater, and he slammed down the phone in my ear.

Lionel Jeffries was in town doing Pygmalion with Peter O’Toole. He was a delight to work with and a perfect voice for Gower. Sometimes things happen for a reason. I’m sorry I never got to work with James Whitmore, a great actor and an important icon in my youth. I squirm a bit remembering this but am glad for even this small contact and experience.

Too few are the photos I have of the recording sessions done for my films. On Abel, I have just two. Both are of Lionel Jeffries who played Gower, the frog.

Mr. Jeffries is a very big name in England and deservedly so. Americans probably remember him best for his performance as “Grandpa Potts” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or as Pellinore in Camelot. In England, his reputation as a director was sealed with The Railway Children, an overwhelming success in that country. In this film, he directed Jenny Agutter in her first role. (I worked with her on my short, Max’s Christmas.)

Mr. Jeffries, like all of the Brits I have worked with was extraordinarily professional. The session was relatively brief, and the performance was more than I ever imagined.
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My biggest regret, on this film, was that I didn’t take a camera to London to snap shots of Tim Curry. His performance as Abel was the rock on which the rest of the film was built. Lionel Jeffries‘ voice worked well with Tim Curry‘s. The only other voice heard in that 1/2 hour show, was Heidi Stallings‘. She also gave a solidly first rate performance as Abel’s wife, Amanda. (No photos of that session either!)

Sterling vocal performances from all three actors really pushed the film off on a good journey.

John Halas was always an advocate for computer animation. He wrote about it long before there was any visible signs of success and he produced some early films using available technology. In 1981, in conjunction with Computer Creations, he produced a 10 min. film done completely digitally.

Computer animation, in those days, was rather priimitive. 6 years earlier, Peter Foldes with his film, Hunger, had offered wire-frame imagery that was didn’t really suggest to character animators the revolution to come. Perhaps Dilemma did, though it didn’t get the attention it might have.

A scene from the film attempts some animation as the winged man
slowly moves his wings up and down as he recedes into Leonardo’s head.

Rather than try to create 3D dolls, the filmmakers were attempting to do graphic animation. There’s nothing in the way of character animation in the piece, though there is a lot of machinery and gears moving and turning. They attempt to tell a story using a lot of morphing graphics and electronic music and sounds.

Within a couple of years, Abel Associates and PDI were producing a lot of shiny things and silver robots animating – change that to moving on the commercials for Levis and cars.

Only 11 years after Dilemma, Pixar would offer Toy Story. Little Viewmaster-like dolls took over computer animation and sealed the near future.

Here’s an article that appeared in a 1981 issue of Millimeter that talks about Dilemma.

Attempting a 10-minute film produced entirely with the assistance of digital computers in the style of traditional animation could send chills up the spine of even the most stalwart animator. Complicate matters by having the film contain over 160 scenes, special effects that include three dimensional simulation, utilize several thousand separate colors, produce the film from start to finish in less than two months, and you have a project that most would consider highly improbable. Such a film, however, is being produced as a joint effort of international scope between Halas & Batchelor Animation Ltd. of London, and Computer Creations of South Bend, Indiana, and New York.

“Dilemma” is a story of evolution; an evolution of intellect and achievement, and of the evolution of destructive capability. Indeed, man has often used his most powerful technological achievements as tools of destruction. The film portrays the progression of this evolution and the resulting dilemma between the application of technology for artistic or destructive intent. The implications of such devastation are clearly global, and it seems appropriate that the film be produced for and distributed by The United Nations General Assembly.

John Halas (veteran animator for over 40 years, producer of over 600 films, and the author of many books and articles on animation) is the visual designer behind the film for Halas & Batchelor in London. When asked why digital computer animation is being utilized for such a project, Mr. Halas responds that “There is no doubt that computer animation has potential to be exploited, and its impact will be felt in all aspects of visual
communication. In this case an approach that could deliver the art style inherent in Janos Kass’ [sculptor and designer whose work provided the inspiration for the film] design was required.”

Computers and animation are nothing new for Halas. In 1974, he wrote that “Artists and designers must come to terms with the computer as they must other gadgets operated by electricity, and if they seriously want to utilize the values and facilities, they obviously must learn to use the computer in much the same way they are using pencils, pens, and brushes.”

Working with John Halas was the Computer Creations team of president Tom Klimek, and senior art director Eric Brown. The challenge was clearly to accomplish such an ambitious undertaking within budget and within a very tight time deadline. Mr. Halas said that the normal productdion requirements for a job of this nature would take “ten full-time workers a minimum of eight months.” Mr. Halas adds that “Because of the reduced time and labor requirements, substantial cost savings have been achieved.”

The process utilized to produce “Dilemma” is known as VideoCel® and is purely digital in nature. There are no cameras, although the images have depth and perspective in full color and are not limited to moving colored lines. The actual artwork is entered into the computer by the artist, using an electronic tablet. The artist provides the coloring and timing instructions by answering simple-questions posed by the computer in ordinary English. In this fashion, the.artist is totally in control, with the engineers and programmers waiting in the wings should their assistance be required. The computer keeps track of all the colors, shapes, areas, and movements, exactly as transmitted by the skilled hand (and style) of the artist. The artist can view the work and modify the instructions for any part of the work at any time. When each scene has been completed, the computer draws each frame (over 18,000 for “Dilemma”), calculating the values for the over 250,000 colored points required for each individual frame.

Here’s an example of the often-used morphing technique that the
filmmakers use to move their story forward.

The images presented in “Dilemma” represent a cross between character animation /and three-dimensional graphic simulation. Several scenes are a computer-generated blend from one scene to another. Images swing and change position in dimension and recombine to produce entirely different pictures and scenes. In other sections of the film, objects delicately form and move about the screen in an abstract form eventually shifting to elements within the story. Still other scenes show fantasy space demons of the future being propelled through space in dimension.

One of the most interesting aspects of “Dilemma” is its pacing. While some sections are gracefully paced and balanced, other scenes race by with the urgency of the theme being conveyed by movement and design. Throughout the film, color is used in a fashion similar to that of conventional eel animation, with subtlety being the emphasis as opposed to high color or the typical glowing lines that have become so popular. With “Dilemma,” the computer has been successfully utilized as a design instrument with the design being determined by the artist — not by machine.

You can watch a clip of this film here.

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Here’s a recap of a couple of past posts I’d made showing one of my favorite sequences in animation – Dumbo’s bath and play with his mother.

- Thanks to a loan from John Canemaker, I can continue posting some of the brilliant storyboard work of Bill Peet. The guy was a masterful artist. Every panel gives so much inspiration and information to the animators, directors and artists who’ll follow up on his work.

This is the sequence from Dumbo wherein baby Dumbo plays around the feet of his mother. Brilliantly animated by Bill Tytla, this sequence is one of the greatest ever animated. No rotoscoping, no MoCap. Just brilliant artists collaborating with perfect timing, perfect structure, perfect everything. Tytla said he watched his young son at home to learn how to animate Dumbo. Bill Peet told Mike Barrier that he was a big fan of circuses, so he was delighted to be working on this piece. Both used their excitement and enthusiasm to bring something brilliant to the screen, and it stands as a masterpiece of the medium.

Of this sequence and Tytla’s animation, Mike Barrier says in Hollywood Cartoons, “What might otherwise be mere cuteness acquires poignance because it is always shaded by a parent’s knowledge of pain and risk. If Dumbo “acted” more, he would almost certainly be a less successful character—’cuter,’ probably, in the cookie-cutter manner of so many other animated characters, but far more superficial.”

I had to take the one very long photstat and reconfigure it in photoshop so that you could enlarge these frames to see them well. I tried to keep the feel of these drawings pinned to that board in tact.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Bill Peet at his desk on Dumbo.

Here are frame grabs from the very same sequence of the film showing how closely the cuts were followed. Even in stills the sequence is stunning.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

This film is a gem.
The dvd also has one of my favorite commentary tracks throughout.
John Canemaker, by himself, talking about the film. It’s great.

- Here’s a mystery that hasn’t been solved since 1975. It was posed to me by Tim Hodge. 1975 is the year Donald Heraldson‘s book, Creators of Life was published. In the book, there’s a team photo of Richard Williams’ staff sitting in front of the Soho Square studio.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

There in the center of the photo is a boy, arms crossed, standing in front of Grim Natwick, Ken Harris and (I think) Rowland Wilson, behind Art Babbitt kneeling. The caption beneath the photo reads: “Yes, the 10 year old boy is part of the staff – Williams considers him a prodigy.”

I know that Williams had taken Errol Le Cain under his tutelage in the 60′s and pushed him to animate the short, The Sailor and the Devil, on his own. However, Le Cain was born in 1941 and wasn’t 10 in 1975.

Perhaps Williams was high on this kid at the time of the photo, but soon grew tired of him and moved on after a couple of months. Or maybe the boy, who’d be in his 40′s now, became one of our top animators.

Or maybe the book, which is filled to the brim with errors, actually misunderstood the role of the child in the studio. (He may just have been someone’s child.)

Well, the question is: who was that “10 year old boy”?

If you have any idea, please leave a comment.

Actually, if you can identify others in the photo, please don’t hesitate to share the info.

- For those who haven’t seen all the Oscar nominated short films, bothe
animated and live-action, this is your chance.

On Saturday, Feb. 14 (Valentine’ Day) at
12 noon and 4pm. The screenings take place at:
Academy Theater at
Lighthouse International
111 E 59th Street

Tickets are $5 for general public, $3 for students.

A photo scrapbook of Khitruk through the years.

- The Russian Live Journal site has a display of photos of the opening for a Feodor Khitruk exhibition. Khitruk, at 91, wasn’t able to attend the opening but Yurij Norstein is in attendance (pic #1), as is Edward Nazarov (#2), and Anatolij Solin & Bladimir Zykov (#3).

If you’re a fan of Russian animation, it’s worth a look. All the current masters are there.

Speaking of Russian animation, a 1999 tv opening by Yurij Norshtein was posted on YouTube. Niffwan, who constructed the video there, writes:

Norshteyn spent a year and a half making this animation for the introduction/conclusion to Good Night, Children (Спокойной ночи, малыши), a popular Russian nightly show for young children to watch before they go to bed. The first part would air before each daily show, the second part after.

The segment accompanied the show for a while in 2000, and was taken off the air in summer of 2001; the show moved to another channel while the copyright for the sequence stayed with the old one.

However, the reactions of Russian audiences were largely negative; program director Valentina Prasolova said: “Norshteyn is a famous artist, but he does not make good opening/closing sequences. We get calls and letters every day about this sequence from people who tell us that it is terrible, that it is dark, that children do not want to watch our program.”

The art direction was done by Valentin Olshvang, rather than by Norshteyn’s wife Franchesca Yarbusova. Olshvang is working on Norshtein’s Overcoat team.

The credits for the piece are as follows:

directed by Yurij Norstein ___written by Yurij Norstein
artist Valentin Olshvang _____animator Yurij Norstein
cameraman M. Granik __music A. Ostrovsky ___ sound V. Ugriumov
produced by Anatoly Prokhorov, Yurij Norstein

Many thanks to Niffiwan at Live Journal for both Russian posts.

- There’s an excellent article about Run Wracke in Res Magazine.

His film Rabbit was a highlight a couple of years back. The follow up film, The Control Master, wasn’t received with quite the same acclaim, though it was equally adept. You might try visiting his site and viewing some of the shorter spots. They’re all fine.

Go here to read it.

- Yesterday I posted a reconstructed board for the sequence eliminated from Fantasia. Baby Ballet was to be set to Chopin’s Berceuse.

Sylvia Moberly-Holland was the principal designer of this piece and Mary Blair worked with her in many of the pastel images on the board. Here are some of those same images in color. I’ve lifted them from the Fantasia “Legacy” dvd and offer them to complete the post. Not all of these color images made it to the board I posted.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

It turns out that it is a small world after all.

The Baby Ballet, set to the music of “Berceuse” by Chopin was to be a segment for Fantasia when they were originally putting the feature together. One of those rotating sequneces that were being planned, such as the Clair d’Lune sequence. The Baby Ballet never made it much further than the storyboards and some small design work.

You can see a similar piece, Perambulator, on an earlier post of mine.

The piece was supervised by Sylvia Moberly-Holland with Mary Blair working under her.

What follows is the board constructed of several versions of the piece. I believe Mary Blair did the fully rendered images. The first version is the board as photographed, followed by my breakdown so that I can keep the images large.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s the breakdown.
11a

11b

11c

12a

12b

12c

13a

13b

14a

14b

15a

15b

21a

21b

22a

22b

23a

23b

24a

24b

25a

25b

31a

31b

32a

32b
33a

33b

34a

34b

Tomorrow, I’ll offer some color sketches.

- Before getting into my photos, let me put in my two cents on Annie awards. It’s absolutely ridiculous that WALL-E didn’t pick up any awards and Kung Fu Panda got it all. I didn’t like either film (for different reasons), but nothing for WALL-E! Ridiculous as it is, even screenplay went to the Panda when Waltz With Bashir was nominated!
We’re living in the world of the 17 year old!

Just a bunch of varied pics and thoughts:

- My friend, Steve Fisher sent me this photo, and it got my juices flowing. I love slices of my favorite NY buildings. The Chrysler Bldg is right up there, #1. Of course, the Empire State is #2.

Wherever you go in NY, you have a built in compass to locate yourself. If you pick the Empire State as the center (or if you can only see the Chrysler Bldg, that’s close enough) you can gauge where you’re standing.
You know that building is at 34th & Fifth, so it’s either N, S, E or W of you. The rest is for you to make the mental marker and arrange accordingly.
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Steve’s photo (above) shows the Chrysler Bldg from Hellsgate Bridge in Astoria, Queens.

Above left I have a photo I took from 59th St. & Lex. Take just one step to the right (as pictured in photo on the right) and you can see the Chrysler Bldg. sliced nicely by all the other buildings on Lexington Ave.
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Here’s the Empire State Bldg as seen on Bleecker St & 6th Ave. You can see that
you’re South and just West of City central. You’re in Greenwich Village.
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Here’s Steve Fisher’s bird’s eye view of the Empire State Bldg
and he writes, “While this shot may not exactly help orient you
in terms of streets and avenues, it perhaps makes a statement
on the direction of our society.”
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This is another of Steve’s photos showing
the glowing orbs of a church on Lexington Ave.
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I love the glowing tops of these two buildings shot on Lexington & 29th St.
but I never seem to be able to capture the feeling of them.
There’s a feeling of dignified opulence in the two buildings.
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Changing the subject: I was in Hastings on Hudson earlier this week.
This was one of the days it snowed; within hours the rain washed it all away.
That type of weather has happened at least once a week since New Year’s.
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I also had a visit and a great lunch with my friend, James Wang and his wife, Andrea.
I’ve known James since 1976 when I hired him for Raggedy Ann & Andy as an in-
betweener. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so ardently dedicated to learning
animation. He’s one of those people in animation I love but see too infrequently.
The photo, taken by an animator in my studio, is mercifully out of focus.
Like Greta Garbo’s cameraman, he’s softened our ages.

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There’s an article about Coraline and the 3D system in today’s NYTimes.